Arthor, Flossie said, turning to me, we should pull it out.
What? I said, appalled.
The crowd looked at me. I lowered my voice.
What on earth for?
Aren’t you curious?
Not enough to pull it out.
That’s a good idea, someone said. Somebody should pull it out.
But you don’t know what it’s got, the mother said.
You think it’s got something? Down there? asked a young woman, hardly more than a girl, in a bleached dress.
What? No. The mother paused then, frowning, considering this new possibility. She shook her head. No. What I meant is, you don’t know what it died from. I wouldn’t touch it, that’s all.
Maybe it isn’t even dead, someone observed.
Oh, it’s dead, all right. The smell.
Well, we won’t touch it, then, Flossie said. We’ll just dig it up a bit, won’t we, Arthor? Just to see.
Dig it up? I said in disbelief.
Again, the crowd turned to me. Stevie solemnly handed me his stick.
I repressed an urge to hit him with it. Instead, I took it and stepped forward. The crowd parted further to let me through.
I wouldn’t, the mother said again. You never know.
I made a few weak stabs in the packed sand.
Watch you don’t puncture it, someone said.
Puncture what?
Whatever’s down there.
The crowd fell silent again, each variously imagining what might be down there. The gulls circled and screamed.
I scraped a little at the sand.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, said Flossie and, dropping her shoes, she elbowed me aside. Before I knew what she was doing, she had grasped the end of the thing with a little mew of disgust and wrenched at it like she was strangling someone.
She’s from the Midwest, I said to the crowd.
The man in the battered homburg stepped forward to help. Two more tugs and the thing came loose and Flossie and the man staggered backwards, dropping it in the sand. It landed with a sickening wet thunk. Flossie lifted her palms, stared at them as if they burned.
Why, someone said, it isn’t attached to anything at all.
Not anymore, it isn’t, another added drily.
I told you so.
That’s right, he did.
But … what is it?
That’s the question.
It’s a tentacle, all right.
But gotta be, what now, sixteen feet.
More.
The man in the homburg poked it with the toe of a waterlogged shoe.
I wouldn’t, the mother said.
Someone should alert the authorities.
Authorities?
Police or whatever.
So they can arrest it?
The university, then.
That’s right, send it to college.
Someone’s got to figure out what it is.
It’s an octopus, like I said.
Can’t be.
I know what I’d do, said the mother.
What?
But she said nothing more.
I couldn’t stop staring at the thing. There was something too awful about it, beyond horrifying. Not just the swollen size, the heaviness, but some other quality, something … almost human about it.
It was then I noticed Flossie was gone. I turned to see her crouched down at the water’s edge, swishing her hands in the sea, the hem of her crimson dress darkened with seawater. She looked very small and I could, for an instant, clearly picture her as a little girl, playing in the dirt of an Indiana cornfield, bright hair straight down her back, late again for supper. I felt sorry for my peevishness earlier. What she was or what she wasn’t, it hardly mattered. And, then, I was not in any position to judge. What did it matter what any of us were or were not. I’d had enough of doubting. Enough of darkness. I needed certainty, light. She was the first glimpse of it I’d had in a long, long time.
That water’s not any cleaner, I advised gently, coming up behind her. You’d be astonished what they dump in here, those canneries.
Then I saw she was crying.
On the walk home, Flossie was quiet. The wind was up, ruthlessly, spitting cold drops that stung our eyes and faces, and we leaned into it, the sky black and rumbling over the water behind us. We walked quickly, in spite of Flossie’s heels. I made some silly joke about them, to lighten things, though I felt heavy also. She didn’t even bother to smile. The wind off the water buffeted against us, billowing her mackintosh out like a bright sail.
Better batten that down, sailor, I said, or you’ll float away.
Still she said nothing, just wrapped her arms around herself, holding the coat to her waist, as if she thought I’d been serious.
Finally, I said, Does it bother you, that thing back there?
She shook her head.
Helen, then? Or are you worried … do you think … ?
I took her silence as confirmation. The image of my employer in the window of my attic room came back to me. The missing women. The boxes of clothing. I did not say it was troubling me, too. I pushed the thought away.
I want us to think well of each other, Arthor.
I do think well of you, Flossie. I told you.
I meant it. She nodded. After a few moments, she said, There’s another thing. That’s bothering me. Something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
I braced myself. Here it comes, I thought. The confession. She was, after all. Of course she was. It all made sense. Even as I told myself, It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter.
What is it?
The wind pasted her yellow curls across her eyes and she pushed them away and blinked furiously in the wind.
She said, I met the next-door neighbour this morning.
Next-door neighbour?
I can’t remember his name. He has a little dog. Maisy, or something. Daisy.
Puzzled, I recalled the hostile old man in the camel overcoat I’d seen in the lane.
What about him?
He said, she began, he said some funny things about you.
I looked at her in surprise.
What could he possibly have to say about me?
Well, I’d just been asking him, you know, about Helen. He said he’d seen her around but not in a few days, and I said I was worried, that she was supposed to be here and then she wasn’t, and I hadn’t heard anything from her.
What does that have to do with me?
That’s just it, Flossie said, looking uncomfortable. He said—oh, I shouldn’t even have brought it up. I wish I hadn’t.
What did he say?
He said … She gave an apologetic laugh. He said—it’s so ridiculous—he said, “If your friend’s gone missing, I’d look for answers with … ”
With what?
“That monster.”
Monster?
“The one who lives upstairs.”
She stared back at me, embarrassed, yes, but I could see a question there, too. It took me a moment. I stopped abruptly in the street.
What, me? You must be joking.
I know, crazy, isn’t it. I didn’t even know what to say.
You didn’t ask him what he meant by that?
No, she said, still hugging herself. Why should I?
I began walking and she followed. We’d crested the hill now by the university. The storm had cleared the lawns and quadrangles and paths of students. Elms twisted in the wind. Lights glowed in some of the classroom windows, as if it were evening. They flickered once, twice, and went out.
Oh, Flossie said. The lights …
Indeed, the sky had darkened ominously. I had darkened, too. What a day. And not half over.
Well, I said finally, stopping again, you might have at least, I don’t know, told him he was crazy. Or something.
A sudden gust of wind whipped her mackintosh open with a wet slap and I stepped away from her.
He is crazy, she said, wrestling the coa
t. Of course he is. I shouldn’t have told you. You’re not feeling well. I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. She laid a hand on my overcoat sleeve. I thought we would just laugh about it. It’s all so silly. A monster. Imagine.
But she wasn’t laughing either.
So, all that talk, I said. Albert Fish. Jack the Ripper.
She took her hand off my sleeve.
No—
I began walking again and she hurried after me.
Arthor, of course not. You must believe me.
But I did not. I did not. She’d wondered about me. Neighbours talked about me. It built and built until my blood roared. I only wanted to be away from her. Away from my employer. Away from everyone. And there was nowhere, nowhere.
It wasn’t until we’d turned into the lane and the house, darkened, stood before us that it occurred to me, dreadfully. The realization stopped me cold.
It wasn’t me the old man was talking about. It couldn’t have been. Flossie only thought so because she didn’t know there was someone else.
I wasn’t the monster; it was my employer.
4
The storm broke over us, pelting icy rain before we had reached the doorstep. The entire street was dark, the electricity blown out. I left Flossie at her apartment door in an air of dread—mine—and apology—hers—and mounted the stairs without looking back, though I could sense her eyes following me. Entering the apartment in the afternoon gloom, I felt drained and miserable—all right, I felt outraged. And, for the first time, genuinely afraid. That, too.
Who was this man? What was he?
I punched the light switch, tugged the cord of the emerald lamp, but of course no lights came on. My note demanding to know why he’d been in my room lay, not surprisingly, untouched on the pedestal table. My hands trembled. Water seeped from my thin soles onto the floorboards of the front hall. I thought of my arrival, some days ago.
For the first time, no light shone from beneath his study door.
Standing there, I had the unmistakable sense, again, that someone had just left the passageway. And who are you? I wondered of the presence. Are you him, too?
I peered about but could see nothing in the gray light. As I entered the stairwell up to the attic, I had that same strange perception: a whisper, a rush of air, as if someone were just ahead of me on the stairs. The sensation grew so strong that I entered my attic room certain I would find someone—him, the monster—standing at my desk, or seated on my bed, waiting, regarding me with dark eyes.
Of course, again, there was no one. Only the storm outside, shaking and battering the windows and walls as if to peel them back.
It had become clear, finally, that I must confront him or leave. Leave, I could not. Where was I to go? Back on the streets? I would surely die there. I’d written Jane, twice, had sent her the money and had had no response. There was nowhere, no one. Outside, the storm raged. I knew I must confront him, must see him, see for myself what sort of man I’d become associated with. I feared the worst.
And yet …
And yet he’d done nothing. He’d failed to appear, yes; he was ill, and reclusive, by his own admission. He’d been in my room, yes; I’d seen him there in the window, but he’d touched nothing, as far as I could tell. Perhaps he’d come up quite reasonably looking for papers, some manuscript, a magazine from the boxes on the floor. Or, simply, for me.
But what, I wondered, about this Helen? What about the aunt? The mother?
My god, I thought then. I rose and riffled through the pockets of my suit jacket. I pulled out my wallet, the chunk of gravestone. Where had I put the letter? Then I recalled I’d left it sitting on the desk. There it was, itself a mystery: each time I meant to deliver it, something distracted me, something stood in my way. As if forces were conspiring against it. I turned the envelope over in my hands. The mother, surely, would shed some light on the man. Perhaps that in itself was keeping me. Perhaps I was afraid of what I would find.
I propped the letter against the chunk of gravestone where I would be sure to see it in the morning. I determined to let nothing stand in my way. I would go as soon as the power was back up. I sat on my bed, staring out at the storm and the city. The light in my room grew dimmer and dimmer as the storm raged and the afternoon wore on.
That monster, I heard Flossie say, that monster.
And there was that other thing, too, I could not account for. That heaviness, that movement I’d first felt on the landing and which seemed now to follow me about the house, upstairs into my attic room, wanting something. I felt it there with me even then, a shifting in the shadows, a constant, terrible presence, like Oakley Eakinns and his refrain, It’s high time you come home.
Outside, the storm battered at the shingles, whipping the branches of the elms against my window. What was I to do?
I had been reading from one of the horror magazines I’d found, the blue light of the storm spattering the windows, barely illuminating the page in a watery, shifting light. I flipped the pages slowly—preposterous tales, all macabre ghouls and monsters and things returned from the dead. Hardly what I needed just at the moment, but there was nothing else, and I suppose I hoped, too, I might find clues there among the stories by my employer.
I read them all in the dim light until my eyes ached in their sockets. I could not say I cared for his tales, gripping though they were. His heroes were all unheroic. When confronted with horror, they only turned and fled. The world he depicted was hopeless, implacably bleak. And yet there was a familiarity in it, too. A truth I could not deny. I read on, not wanting to sleep. My eyes burned and I closed them a moment, to rest them, the blackness cool, inviting, it pulled me down, and down. Something was building, behind me, something that began as an idea, swelling, I ran and ran—and woke with a start, into darkness.
The attic, the windows, the city beyond impossibly black. I flicked the bedside lamp several times with something like panic before remembering the power was out. I sat up, rummaged about in the night table drawer, hoping for candles, but found only a button, a safety pin, dust.
Damn it, I said, foolishly, into the darkness.
The storm lashed at the windows, as it had the night of my arrival. The roof groaned. The loose pane in the corner rattled. I rose, groping my way along the damp walls and down the stairs, moving slowly.
As I neared the second floor, I could feel it, that thickening the presence seemed to do there that raised the hair on the back of my neck. It occurred to me that the presence was strongest when moving toward his study door, or away from it. I could almost hear it. A low, steady, almost imperceptible groan. I nearly spun a retreat to my room; but the idea of turning my back on the thing, the feeling, whatever it was, in that darkness, was worse than moving forward, to the promise of light, candles I remembered seeing in a utility drawer in the kitchen. I pressed on, palms against the warped plaster walls, the hairs all over my body on end, through the hall, the sense all the time that someone was just behind me, that if I were to turn around—
Steady, Crandle, steady, I said aloud.
I stumbled into the kitchen, fumbling along the cabinets, prying swelled drawers open with my fingertips and rummaging there—I could have sworn I felt breath on the back of my neck—nicking my hand on the blade of a knife, before finally grasping the candles, their waxen coldness unpleasant in my palm. But no matches.
The black feeling was all around me. I took the candles and, turning, knocked an empty tin can from the counter. It clattered impossibly on the linoleum, spinning and spinning in the darkness. And stopped. So suddenly it was as if by some hand.
I fumbled my way back out into the hall, moving too fast, the sound of my own breathing rising absurdly above the storm. I felt my way past the pedestal table, nearly upsetting the lamp there. I grasped the glass shade, setting it upright again on the table.
There, to my surprise, lay a reply to my note. I picked it up but could not see what was scrawled there. He had re
sponded, at least. He was in there, in that black room, even as I stood rattled outside of it. I hesitated. Then, taking the dead candles and the note, I crept toward his study and paused, listening. That blackness, that oppressive air, I felt sure then, must be coming from that room, from my employer, from his being, whatever he was. Monster, I heard in my head, monster. My skin crawled and prickled as if the black air outside his door were alive. I recalled hearing once how the insane seem to radiate a terrible energy.
Raising a hand, I stood dumbly, unable to make contact, again, with that door. I was paralyzed, unable to go forward, unable to turn away, when a voice said, distinctly, Come in.
Inside was darker. The air so thick, so heavy, so purely bad, I felt strangled by it. I stood in the doorway, terrified—yes, I am not ashamed to admit it. At the far end of the room, the night lashed faintly behind pulled draperies. The silhouette of a floor lamp, a Morris chair, and someone—was that someone seated there?
So, he said finally, softly, you’ve come to see the monster.
I strained, peering through the darkness.
I’ve brought candles, I said, stupidly.
A long, terrible pause in which the house groaned around me. Then, You will find matches in the table to your left.
I reached down, found the table, and the drawer there, and fumbled about for the box of matches. When I found it, I struck and struck, but the match would not light, only flare up an instant and extinguish, as if pinched out. My hands were not steady.
Perhaps they’ve grown damp, he said.
It was a moment before I realized he meant not my hands but the matches.
I have little use for them, he said. Nor candles. When the lights go out, I am content with darkness.
I dropped the box of matches and they scattered across the carpet, soundlessly, as if they’d fallen and fallen into black, limitless space, as if, should I take a step forward, I too would disappear without a sound.
Leave them, he said. You will find a chair there.
I remained standing in the doorway, unable to move forward. That feeling of overwhelming—I hesitate to call it malevolence, but there is no more fitting word—hung heavily all around me, the strongest it had ever been, telling me not to go in. All my nerves stood on end, watching for any small movement in the room, my eyes constantly drawn to the faint blue light showing at the two windows, and the Morris chair there.
The Broken Hours Page 9